Some Seasons…

/ Richard R. Barron

I started the morning by weighing myself, 145 pounds. My wife Abby and I are both thinner now than the day we met, maybe even a couple of pounds too thin.

After I picked some peaches, cherries, and plums, I dumped the basket out in a clover patch to make this image. Even if I were to never eat a single bite of this fruit, growing it is worth it because it is so beautiful.
After I picked some peaches, cherries, and plums, I dumped the basket out in a clover patch to make this image. Even if I were to never eat a single bite of this fruit, growing it is worth it because it is so beautiful.

Yesterday I covered the Artesian Arts Festival, a growing, super-popular Native American street festival in Sulphur, Oklahoma. I usually go early so I can beat the heat, and even though I was there right at the start time, it was packed.

I saw my friend Margaret, who was showing her art in one of the booths.

I got these four giveaway garden plants in the ground last night, two bell pepper plants and two Cherokee purple tomatoes.
I got these four giveaway garden plants in the ground last night, two bell pepper plants and two Cherokee purple tomatoes.

I shot well, and as I was leaving, I got two green bell pepper plants and two Cherokee purple tomato plants from a giveaway program. I got them planted in the garden last night.

On the way home, I brought lunch for us from San Remos, a bake ziti for Abby, and a veggie pizza for me, then ate as I worked my images from the festival and delivered them to my editor.

Later in the evening, I decided to pick some of my huge crop of early Elberta peaches, from the tree I felt certain had doomed itself by blooming too early, just before a hard freeze.

I am also astonished by how well all my other trees are doing. I have plums for the first time ever, and a huge number of cherries. Some seasons I am just happy to see my trees be trees, and some seasons shower me with produce. It’s almost impossible to guess how it will go, since there are so many variables, but in many ways, that’s one of the fun things about it.

Hawken, our 160-pound Irish Wolfhound, slobbers over a peach I gave him a few nights ago. The next time I looked up, he had eaten it.
Hawken, our 160-pound Irish Wolfhound, slobbers over a peach I gave him a few nights ago. The next time I looked up, he had eaten it.

FInally, I had the urge to shoot a few mags of 9mm through my Ruger P95, the same one I dreamed about recently.

[stextbox id=’grey’ caption=’In the dream…’]I catch some thugs trashing the house, but am too late to confront them. I am able to shoot one round from my 9mm into the back of their car from more than a mile away. Abby and I are then in the first class section of a 747 headed for Houston. For some reason I still have my 9mm. I wear it in an open holster or put it on the table in front of me. No one seems to notice or care, which I find very odd, and am unable to find anywhere to put it out of sight. People complain that my laptop is too loud, but say nothing about the fact that I am armed.[/stextbox]

I hadn’t put any combat calibers downrange since January, and felt rusty. It was good to get back in the swing, and I shot competently.

There has been a lot of Oklahoma weather news this month, including tornadoes and flooding, but our little patch of green in the country is doing just fine.

My Ruger P95 leans against my tan range bag on the gun bench down by the pond last night. I put 70 rounds through it, with satisfying results.
My Ruger P95 leans against my tan range bag on the gun bench down by the pond last night. I put 70 rounds through it, with satisfying results.